


Dogging Death

by salazar_kat



Series: Background fics to 'Snacks and Letters' [22]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-05
Updated: 2011-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-21 01:52:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazar_kat/pseuds/salazar_kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes even Severus blames himself for Sirius' death...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dogging Death

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Snacks and Letters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/216898) by [salazar_kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazar_kat/pseuds/salazar_kat), [Sionna_Raven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sionna_Raven/pseuds/Sionna_Raven). 



There was a fierceness to him. Snape's clever eyes, so black they looked like voids in space, searched for ways and means, means and ways, anything to survive and end the Dark Lord's terror and live to tell the tale. Not tall tales, not by a long shot. Yet he could not let the matter pass when it came to his last rival. He'd loved to taunt the other man who had long dark hair as well, and was otherwise his opposite.

Fire and ice, that's what had been, and never had they connected. He supposed be should be glad his foe Black was dead, but instead a dead feeling had entered his stomach, and the curtains closed in his mind and he dwelt in dark possibility.

Did he grieve the mutt at all? He was a Healer at heart, and that ticking thing that rang in his veins was the possibility that Sirius could have, as his younger brother Regulus had once encouraged, been friends with him. Salazar, what was he thinking? Severus did not make friends easily. His loyalty was fierce as his eyes, and a bitter repentance tore at his fevered brain. A small area of the mind that was highly neglected made him feel some small amount of compassion for the hound of Hades. The conflict warred against his instincts.

It was illusory, Severus' shyness. He was actually far more introverted than some mere explanation of shyness. He hadn't been shy around Sirius Black, but challenged. He'd liked that feeling.

It would be a long and tedious life with such little opposition. The Blacks were gone. He closed his eyes and readied himself for a long night on watch, the corridors of Hogwarts deserted, his mind back on the lack of challenge posed by the boy he had refused to teach Occlumency.

Perhaps, if he had taught the boy properly, Sirius...would be alive. Sirius had reached life's destination, the end, and Severus would tolerate it, and stomach it, and yet refuse the blankness entry through his blasted mind, his void-like stare.


End file.
